Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Precipitation can be divided into three categories, based on whether it falls as liquid water, liquid water that freezes on contact with the surface, or ice. Mixtures of different types of precipitation, including types in different categories, can fall simultaneously. Liquid forms of precipitation include rain and drizzle.
Rain or drizzle which freezes on contact with a surface within a subfreezing air mass gains the preceding adjective "freezing", becoming the known freezing rain or freezing drizzle. Slush is a mixture of both liquid and solid precipitation. Frozen forms of precipitation include snow, ice crystals, ice pellets (sleet), hail, and graupel. Their ...
Graupel (/ ˈ ɡ r aʊ p əl /; German: [ˈɡʁaʊpl̩] ⓘ), also called soft hail or hominy snow or granular snow or snow pellets, [1] is precipitation that forms when supercooled water droplets in air are collected and freeze on falling snowflakes, forming 2–5 mm (0.08–0.20 in) balls of crisp, opaque rime.
In an aqueous solution, precipitation is the "sedimentation of a solid material (a precipitate) from a liquid solution". [ 1 ] [ 2 ] The solid formed is called the precipitate . [ 3 ] In case of an inorganic chemical reaction leading to precipitation, the chemical reagent causing the solid to form is called the precipitant .
A rain gauge (also known as udometer, pluviometer, ombrometer, and hyetometer) is an instrument used by meteorologists and hydrologists to gather and measure the amount of liquid precipitation in a predefined area, over a set period of time. [1]
Thus, fog and mist are not precipitation; their water vapor does not condense sufficiently to precipitate, so fog and mist do not fall. (Such a non-precipitating combination is a colloid .) Two processes, possibly acting together, can lead to air becoming saturated with water vapor: cooling the air or adding water vapor to the air.
Drizzle is a light precipitation which consists of liquid water drops that are smaller than those of rain – generally smaller than 0.5 mm (0.02 in) in diameter. [1] Drizzle is normally produced by low stratiform clouds and stratocumulus clouds. Precipitation rates from drizzle are on the order of a millimetre (0.04 in) per day or less at the ...
The term precipitation is normally reserved for describing a phase change from a colloid dispersion to a solid (precipitate) when it is subjected to a perturbation. [19] Aggregation causes sedimentation or creaming, therefore the colloid is unstable: if either of these processes occur the colloid will no longer be a suspension.